Current and Future Trends in Mobile Device Forensics: A Survey

Authors

Abstract

Contemporary mobile devices are the result of an evolution process where computational and networking capabilities have been continuously pushed so as to keep pace with the constantly growing workload requirements. This has allowed devices such as smartphone and tablets to perform increasingly complex tasks, up to the point of efficiently replacing traditional options such as desktop computers and notebooks. However, these devices are more prone to theft, to compromising or to exploitation for attacks and other malicious activity, mainly due to their portability and size. The need for investigation of the aforementioned incidents resulted in the creation of the Mobile Forensics (MF) discipline. MF, a sub-domain of Digital Forensics (DF) is specialized in extracting and processing evidence from mobile devices in such a way that attacking entities and actions are identified and traced. Beyond its primary research interest on accurate evidence acquisition from mobile devices, MF has recently expanded its scope to encompass the organized and advanced evidence representation and analysis of entities behavior. The current paper aims to present the research conducted within the MF ecosystem during the last six years. Moreover, it identifies the gaps and highlights the differences from past research directions. Lastly, it addresses challenges and open issues in the field.

Year 2019 : 6 citations

Kruger, Jaco-Louis, and Hein Venter. "State of the art in Digital Forensics for the Internet of Things." International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security. Academic Conferences International Limited, 2019.